Nadine Gordimer in Cuba, Literature as a Creed

Literature is my life, assured in this capital South African writer Nadine Gordimer who professes a faith put to the tests again and over again since she decided to open the doors of literature at 26.

Today, she is 86 and her credo remains the same. She keeps a slender figure, a dynamic walk, an alert lucidity and the same convictions that led her to face a bitter regimen of racial segregation, the apartheid, and all other forms of injustice.

The writers are committed to the exploration of life but not just as writers but also as citizens of a country, she expressed in a dialogue with the public at the 19th International Book Fair 2010 in the event's section "Meeting with?", in which she presented the Cuban edition of her novel "A Whim of Nature".

"Life is a wonderful and a deep mystery in all its aspects, cultural, social and political. We are human beings with human responsibilities," she said.

With a precise, refined technique, which serves as a channel to a narrative without shrillness. Gordimer accumulates 16 novels whose characters, according to her, have helped to enrich her own individuality. "They have helped me", she said, "to be what I am."

Among the classics in Hispanic language, she spoke with devotion about Cuban Alejo Carpentier, "to whom you always have to return because he researched very deeply in what we are as human beings. It is an influence for all writers," she commented. So are, she said, Argentine Jorge Luis Borges and Mexican Carlos Fuentes.

Gordimer is proud to have always written what she thought was necessary and she assured her dream for the future, like many of her colleagues, is to see human justice prevail over all.

Six of her books apart from "A Whim of Nature" whose copy rights she donated to the island went on sale at the fair but they were insufficient to quench the public's thirst for works of this writer capable of deleting geographical distances with a single puff.

Nadine Gordimer walked the Havana Book Fair as one who travels a familiar path. For a long time she has been supporting this Caribbean island, whose dreams and destiny she defends.

"I appreciate being invited. Viva Cuba," she said fervently in her farewell speech and the phrase flew through the air like a warm arrow.